A short story on fractals, or synchronicity in systemic coaching

When a coach announced his arrival at the reception to meet with an entrepreneurial CEO in her office building, the receptionist informed him that the expected meeting had been cancelled... an emergency... but if he could wait a few minutes, the CEO was on her way down from her office and would explain.

Again a postponed meeting! Again wasted time! Deception, frustration, anger… emotions flowed through the coach. Gaining awareness of his emotional turmoil, the coach recovered, first with resignation, then with acceptance, then by embracing the new state of affairs.

The CEO rushed through the lobby, explaining on her way out that she just had an unexpected meeting with a strategic partner, on the other end of town… just enough time to get there… I’m very sorry… we have to postpone our conversation to a a later date.

The coach suddenly had an intuition, and seized the opportunity:

_ ? Not a problem! I’ll accompany you there, and we’ll have time to discuss what's going on while you drive. Anyway, I don’t have anything else on my agenda in the coming hour ?. And he followed his client to her car.

In the car, the client CEO is obviously stressed. The coach fastens his seat belt. She immediately engages in a high-pitched monologue on the crisis situation. She is in the middle of a strategic negotiation with an important partner, and they are blocked. She is frustrated, almost exasperated. Months of time investment, hope and planning are inches away from becoming an utter loss.

She unfolds her story and spills out her disappointment while driving. The traffic is intense, then slows, and then jams to a standstill. She becomes more and more tense, stressed, agitated, obviously feeling cornered. Her dialogue switches to fuming about the monstrous traffic jam in which they both are quite stuck. Perceiving the client’s intense frustration, the coach patiently sits back, waits it out. While the client is voicing her emotional state, the coach calmly breathes, observes, stays very present and attentive.

Suddenly, in a jolt, the CEO reacts: She takes a sharp right turn to engage into a smaller tangential street, accelerates, turns again, and again. She instinctively seizes openings that emerge in the traffic’s flow. From crossroads to roundabouts, slowing then speeding, her stress gradually transforms into a high adrenaline-driven alertness. The car finally engages into a well-oriented and rather fluid avenue. The cruising CEO then gradually calms down. They will not be more than ten minutes late! She sighs with relief.

_ ? So what do you think of all this? ? she conversationally, almost absent-mindedly asks her coach, just a few minutes before arriving at their destination.

_ ? If you are talking about the way you drove here, started the coach, I think there are a number of possibly interesting elements. In your initial precipitation, you first took the most obvious direct route, and got yourself into a massive traffic jam. You then felt stuck, became exasperated, angered. I laid low. Then, you reacted in a creative way by seizing small emerging opportunities, then found indirect more fluid routes that led you to a much more open avenue. To conclude, you are now arriving at your expected destination, relatively on time.

I consequently think that if you don’t get too frustrated when you meet hurdles, if you don’t lose sight of your longer-term goal, and if you trust your creative, instinctive and opportunist capacities, you have all the skills you need to deploy very positive agility to achieve your expected success. I do wonder what equivalent strategies you could deploy in your partnership project. But you are in a hurry, so can you call me as soon as you are done with your meeting? ?

An hour later, the CEO called her coach to thank him. She was really satisfied. She had succeeded to navigate the strategic partnership around the difficult snags. Together, they had found unexpected innovating options. They were back in business and very motivated!

In a systemic dimension:

1. Every single event in our lives unfolds to reveal a meaningful structure, a characteristic form, a precise pattern or process.

2. Consequently for a systemic coach, there are no privileged subjects, times or locations where one listens to a client's way of being, reacting, problem-solving and learning.

Indeed, any client time and place can offer very privileged coaching opportunities. Especially those times and places that are obviously connected to client lives and environments. There, it is always useful to listen to client patterns, even in all their apparently meaningless actions, in all their seemingly insignificant daily routines. Everywhere in their lives and environments, clients always express themselves as they are, in direct connection with their ongoing patterns, their inner story or dialogue.  This can happen in a restaurant with the staff, in mobility with the surrounding traffic and environment, in their offices and meetings, while discussing or just conversing with their personnel, in a park with or without a surrounding crowd, at home within their families, in their individual or collective sports, in their hobbies, etc. 

• A systemic coach espouses the basic principle that beyond content, client interactive patterns, the very shape of their behaviors and connections, always serve to illustrate their fundamental concerns, rhythms, strategies, behaviors, inner conversations on their ways to develop and succeed. 

In apparently different environments, including when interacting with a coach, each most innocuous client interaction presents itself with a very precise and significant form, a well-defined, precisely scripted story-line that merits intense coach attention if not comprehension.  

• When well trained in systemic pattern-recognition, coach presence and attention naturally focus on the pertinent forms or patterns that hold the essence of client issues, concerns, strategies, purpose, ambitions, etc.

Examples:

The apparent partnership issues and driving difficulties expressed by the entrepreneurial CEO in the above case-study both follow a precise, shared pattern. Indeed, a same client theme is equally present in the negotiation situation with a strategic partner and during the trip across town.

A) In both cases, the client first chooses to take the most obvious, direct route, 

B) On this trajectory, the client meets with unexpected difficulties: the traffic jams, the common projects hits an important snag.

C) These unexpected hurdles create impatience, stress, tension, anger... that could provoke or confirm a deadlock.

D) Creative reactivity, entrepreneurial or lateral opportunism, innovative search for emerging openings, all allow the client to find unexpected alternatives, to...

E) ...achieve destination and success.

The coach as a participating witness.

For a systemic coach, there are always personal learning opportunities to be seized in each and all client interactions. The above sequence is also marked with another coach-related, shared or fractal occurrence:

When a) arriving to the expected meeting and before seeing the client, the coach is also b) faced with a blocked situation: the meeting is cancelled. The coach also c) goes through diverse emotional reactions of deception, exasperation, anger, then resignation and acceptance. When the client arrives at the reception and shares her reasons for cancelling, the coach also d) makes a instinctive, creative, opportunist offer to accompany her on her trip, in order to have the coaching meeting on the road. This reaction also e) helps keep and ultimately consolidate the client relationship by providing measurable added value, in a totally unexpected way. This outcome reflects the final success achieved by the CEO with her strategic business partner. 

• Consequently in almost total synchronicity, the coach goes through the same client pattern, navigating through an equivalent fractal loop within minutes. The coach can consequently be considered a responsible participating observer in a shared interactive theme, behavioral process or unfolding script. 

Synchronicity and fractals

Synchronicity is a relatively known and accepted concept and phenomena. First coined and proposed by C. G. Jung, it is now part of a shared social reality. Historically however, synchronicity has generally been perceived as an occasional, almost freak occurrence. Today, systems thinking and more recent quantum mechanics theories propose a more innovating working hypotheses by which synchronicity is eternally present, emerging into all our spaces and times.  The fact that we are only occasionally aware of synchronicity does not rule out its ubiquity or omnipresence in all aspects of our lives. 

In fact, according to a more modern, fundamentally energy-based and holographic vision of reality, all that we perceive actually fits together into an all-inclusive and highly significant fractal-based ensemble, a constant synchronic whole. At any point in space and time, as through the multiple facets of a same crystal, all our interactions with our diverse environments are actually part of a same unique conversation that each of us is unfolding within ourselves in order to develop and evolve towards our deepest desired outcomes. This is the fundamental, existential reality of our inner game.

Theory and practice

Today, these systemic and quantum concepts are becoming well known. They are the subject of numerous scholarly debates as to the true nature of reality. Obviously, however, these novel theories are not the subject of systemic coaching interactions with clients. In fact, systemic coaches are not to present themselves as systemic theoreticians. Just as for any other professional in the field of coaching, systemic coaches are just intensely trained to humbly perceive, recognize and integrate the patterns that emerge in all aspects of their own lives, as well as those at work within their client concerns and developments. Usefully, in as much as clients and their coaches share fractals, these patterns often overlap, are sometimes almost identical. Beyond just observing of course, systemic coaches are also trained to respectfully intervene to facilitate client changes of perspectives and induce useful viral shifts, in order to help themselves and their clients open each of their unfolding internal dialogues. 

To consult a first of three articles on quantum theory applied to systemic coaching: https://www.metasysteme-coaching.eu/english/quantum-coaching-i-space-time-warps/

To experience an online systemic self-coaching journey, in order to discover your own active fractals in your present life concerns(50€): https://www.metasysteme-coaching.eu/english/online-self-coaching-for-managers-and-coaches/

To participate in a 2-day diagnosis workshop on individual/team/organizational fractal patterns and how they mesh: https://www.metasysteme-coaching.eu/english/dates-locations-and-prices/1407/bucharest-individual-and-team-pattern-diagnosis-april-12-13-2018/

To embark on an in-depth systemic-coach training program: https://www.metasysteme-coaching.eu/english/dates-locations-and-prices/1646/bucharest-systemic-coaching-et-leadership-fundamentals-september-24-25-2018/